Contents

Biography

Early life

Tite Kubo was born in Hiroshima, Japan[2] and decided to become a manga artist when he was still in elementary school.[3]

Manga career

Kubo first got into manga during his third year of high school. He entered a contest, telling a teacher he wanted to be a mangaka. He made it to the final round of the competition but ultimately lost. Despite this, he was contacted by an editor at Shueisha just before summer vacation. He briefly considered going to school for fashion design before settling on manga.[2] He also considered architecture.[3]

His first work of manga was a one-shot for Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1996 called Ultra Unholy Hearted Machine.[4] This was the same issue that One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda debuted in. Oda's one-shot ranked third, while Kubo's ranked fourth. Kubo started to dislike Oda after this incident. He was content doing one-shots for three years following its publication. However, Kubo had a tense relationship early on with Kazuhiko Torishima, the editor-in-chief of Jump, who told him his one-shots were awful and told him to come back after he had read and could draw manga like Dragon Ball. Kubo ignored this advice.[2]

Kubo debuted as a serious manga artist with his first manga, Zombiepowder, in 1999. Its run was canceled after just twenty-seven chapters.[5]

Bleach

He began writing Bleach soon after Zombiepower's cancelation and it was published in the Weekly Shōnen Jump beginning in August 2001. He was pushed into writing Bleach by his editorial staff. Initially, he had no ideas for a new manga following Zombiepowder, but, after prodding, remembered that he had some character sketches stashed away, and this became the basis of Bleach.[2]

Kubo expected the manga to run only five years, however it continued to run for a total of fifteen years before finally concluding. Shōnen Jump originally rejected Bleach, which discouraged Kubo. However, a letter he received from Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball, encouraged him to keep trying.[4]

Controversy swirled around Bleach's ending in 2016. However, despite rumors, Kubo confirmed that he did indeed end the manga in a fashion he desired. In an interview given after the series cancelation, Kubo revealed that he would often let the series coast on auto-pilot, which wasn't difficult, he claimed, because one didn't need to think much when serializing a weekly manga. He was very tired when Bleach concluded.[2]

Personality

Tite Kubo is a individualistic and private author and artist. He prefers to do most things, such as eating and writing, alone (until he got married). He disliked the oversight of editors and, though his relationship with his first editor was amicable, he frequently ignored the suggestions of his editors. He also didn't mind working with his assistants (though he preferred to write alone), but, because they were often older than him, he found it hard to work with them and kept their meetings short.[2]

Influences

Kubo cites GeGeGe no Kitarō with influencing the supernatural elements of Bleach. He also credits Saint Seiya (also known as Knights of the Zodiac) by Masami Kurumada as having inspired the weapons of Bleach. Furthermore, the idea for Bleach came about because he wanted to draw Shinigami in kimono (which later became the shihakushō).[3] In later interviews, Kubo revealed his fear of death also played a role in his deciding to write Bleach.[2]